NOTE FROM A KRAKEN

Over time the kraken's dreams
Have filled up with sea wrack and flotsam
From sunken ships. On stationery
From a ship that will go down in 1912
He writes with a pen that, as warranted,
Works underwater. "Dear Sir Alfred,"
He begins, "Though we have not met
You will know that I am a sea monster
Who's been sleeping since the world began.
Lately, while idly leafing through

The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse
I came upon your sonnet, The Kraken.
To my surprise you have written that
Some meddlesome angel will eventually
Poke a spear in the ocean, making it boil.
(I must say, I would like to have a few words
With whoever thought arming angels
Was a good idea). At that -- I am still
Following your poem -- I will wake up,
Roaring. (As who wouldn’t at being boiled?)
Then, you write, I will rise to the surface
And die.

                  Again: I am to wake, roar, rise, die.
This came as a shock. Until now I have cherished
A range of possibilities. In my grander dreams
I have become the Slade Professor of Art
And lectured to crowds of eager aesthetes.
More modestly, I assumed I might support myself
By clerical work or, at the very least, rampage
Through some great Eastern metropolis.
Frankly, I no longer see the point of existing
And, as you are the cause of my perplexity
I turn to you for counsel, trusting you will resist
The urge to quote yourself on mine not to reason why.
Yours faithfully,
                    Microcosmus Marinus, Kraken."

MEETING

Great jags of rock there were and scree
And broken shingles though surely no house
Had ever stood there. Unfriendly shapes,
Dimly seen, darted in the water -- such things
As may feed a sleeping kraken waiting the world's end
So he can wake and roar and rise and die.
All that is worst of me sat looking in the dark water
Not angry, for a change, but only sad and tired
I sat  beside him; he seemed too wretched to be feared
There was nothing to say; the debts between us
Were ones I had left unpaid.

                                            Every wicked urge
Has his own wicked urge who follows him about
Tempting him to commit good deeds.